VDS Voices

Camille Kammer (MDiv ’22) was one of the few VDS students whose field education at the YWCA Nashville & Middle Tennessee was completed in-person during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Her work providing pastoral care to women fleeing domestic violence served the largest domestic violence shelter in the region and was guided by Erika Callaway Kleiner (MDiv ’02). Read More

well, for those of you who began your time here in the fall of 2019, you have been through it—not just in the classroom—but in the events that surrounded our lives that academic year began with a dispute between the subcontractors that built the new wing of our building… Read More

Bone-deep love calls us to live our lives out of the possibilities found in wholeness, self-reflection, justice, peace, a new heaven and a new earth, hope and not our shortcomings—that rest on greed, self-centeredness, avarice, coveting, despair. Amazing love moves us to grow in compassion, understanding, and acceptance of each other. A far better place to be morning by morning and day by day. Read More

Somehow, no matter what the world hands us we give back love, we stand for goodness, we live our faith, we live with integrity. we live God’s grace large, we stand with the least of these, we build bridges of salvation, liberation, justice, joy, and deep spirit that can carry the depth and breadth of humanity over them. Read More

For the first time in its history, the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice has accepted three scholars into its year-long fellowship program, which focuses on matters relating to the intersections of religion, economic justice, class and labor, and environmental justice. The previous cohort in 2020 had… Read More

Lament is not about helplessness or hopelessness. When done in community, we name that which is causing us to be tempted by despair with as much precision as possible and then begin to take steps to address—if not eradicate—that which keeps us from a more just world. Read More

Guest Story by Rev. Laura M. Cheifetz, Assistant Dean of Admissions, Vocation & Stewardship From Vincent Chin to #StopAAPIHate: Helen Zia and 40+ Years of Asian American Activism You are invited to hear Helen Zia, legendary author, activist and former journalist, speak here at Vanderbilt University on March 24. Read More

Meg Wade, a second-year MDiv student, brings her passion for helping those in mourning process their grief as a “grief doula,” while George Schmidt, a second-year PhD student in theological studies, brings his experience as an military chaplain that was present at hundreds of burial ceremonies to assist next of kin at the Arlington National Cemetery. Both highlight contrasts as well as similarities in the way society ritualizes grief. Read More

The Rev. Teresa L. Smallwood, who helped launch Vanderbilt’s Public Theology and Racial Justice Collaborative as associate director in 2017, is moving to Pennsylvania’s United Lutheran Seminary in January. Over Smallwood’s four years at Vanderbilt Divinity School, the Collaborative has hosted nearly 30 workshops and more than 20… Read More

Artist rendering/Tricia Townes An idea borne out of the destruction from the 2020 tornado that hit middle Tennessee, the North Nashville Community Garden blossomed into a place for church congregants and gardening hobbyists alike to commune and heal. It will be featured on Nashville Public Television’s “Volunteer Gardener”… Read More